What would you do to MAX's to make them useful, skillful, balanced?

Personally, I would think melee only.


Abilities would obviously need to be changed. But allow them to attack while charging (ability) or spriting but still have the cooldown/slow and slow turn while sprinting. Composite armor increases resistance to all damage types instead of flak or composite, Nano-repair comparable to vehicles, an AV ABILITY, like a launcher/railgun/Laser that uses the ability cooldown and takes the ability slot.

In short: Much more tanky, a little more agile, less range. Crush people in close quarters and could destroy tanks and such if you get right on em. But require a whole new kind of skill-set to use to their maximum potential.
Smart play like leading them into traps or wearing down from a distance can kill them, but god help you if you get stuck in a room with one.

Would this ever happen? No. But I can dream~


EDIT
Heck, in retrospect it's basically a warhammer assault marine, sans the jetpack. (Vanu specific max ability maybe?)

Log in, you have this right now.

Not that I'd say no to a giant melee weapon for my MAX though.

Get rid of them.
They are ruining this game.

Reduce their DPS by half and increase their surviablity/toughness by double.

Make them a lot more resistant to bullets, but also less agile, and less DPS.

When I say this people jump to conclusions about the bullet resistance without even considering the lesser DPS...but do the math, it can work. Besides, every other player has C4 or rockets anyway, and with less agility they won't be sidestepping them.

I'm basically saying the same thing as you, but I am only saying increase their toughness to regular bullets, not AV/C4.

I'm not entirely sure I want MAXs that can survive more than 2 C4.

They should be bullet sponges, not killing machines. I guess making them less effective at killing infantry would make all the max users cry, but more options wouldn't hurt. Let me sacrifice my weapons for increased overall resistance and dual wield aegis shields that cover my entire front + 1m to the left and right. It wouldn't hurt the people that want to farm with maxes, and would allow you to use a max as a way to push up even more than now.

Slight variation on your dual aegis - you carry no weapons (or you can't use it at the same time), but you project an energy shield that is projected about 2 meters in front, and covers an area of 3-4 meters wide/high. Good for leading infantry charges into rooms.

Would need to be a NS thing, should not be one faction only.

Oh I'm well aware, facing it from both ends a max can easily be destroyed with conc or flash nades followed up with AV, C4, rocket, whatever. No planning necessary. But if you simply toss down a C4 in a doorway where they are heading, or pop off a few shots to lure him in, it's easy.

Or pop out from range and shot rockets. 2 and he's down. easy.

But I do believe the main complaint that "The max is basically a bigger, stronger, better armed version of "you" makes sense.

Really, any of the more tanky less dakka options would work, as long as they're not too outrageously good. The max would be a cert pinata without the support of others, as he has no options to kill anyone next to the max punch. So this would promote teamwork a bit, something that this game really could use. One thing I forgot to mention in my last post, I think that maxes should be slower overall. Their current sprint speed after they're done accelerating is almost as fast as that of all the other infantry. Or give the VS max the mobility that it's supposed to have, and reduce the speed on the other maxes and increase their armor.

Well... bigger anyway. If they were really stronger, I'd expect to be 1-shotting people in melee, and MAX weapons are kinda horrible in general. The main benefit they seem to get is huge ammo reserves.

If I could replace my guns with shields and just be a walking wall, I would go with that option.

You get XP for every bullet you block.

I wouldn't do anything

There's no point until SOE gets done screwing with the overall Mission system, TKK, & Resouces they're working on right now.

There's a guy who did this in DarkSouls. ...it's got a really catchy song.

EOD can make a MAX fairly hard to trap.

This would utterly ruin VS and TR's MAXes(it would be too easy to get C4 on them when they have such long TTK), while making NC's very overpowered since they already deal such overkill damage. OTOH VS and TR would almost automatically win MAX fights, at least AI vs. AI, since NC wouldn't be able to one clip.

If they reduced damage they'd have to up survivability quite a bit to make up for it, not just 2x, as a MAX with a long TTK can't really defend itself from infantry that can just toss C4 on it in that longer window.

Then you have AV weapons which @ half damage would not be very good, but at full damage they'd just be the new AI weapons if AI guns do half.

God yes. Walk into a room filled with chaingun heavies? Swim in certs.

Most of the best ways of balancing MAXes can't really happen because the game's been out too long and players are accustomed to terrible MAX balance. Really things should've ended up a little more like TF2 where heavies are a strong, slow playstyle but not actually better than the other playstyles (and also they don't have some arbitrary cost to play as them.)

But for actual things they could do to solve the problem, reducing MAXes' TTK advantage would be the main thing. That's the core of their imbalance.

Other significant factors that many players ignore are Charge and Run Mode. Even with their TTK advantage, I think MAXes might become balanced if they couldn't take Charge and if Run Mode was slower to accelerate. Charge basically eradicates my weakness to most explosives, allowing me to instantly cover the ground to be right up on top of someone and kill them basically before they even have a chance to equip anti-MAX weapons (or in other situations, dodge around C4.) There are very few situations where you'd want an ability other than charge in a MAX, due to how overpowered it is currently.

Then, after MAXes are actually directly balanced by tweaking their stats, they could switch to not having a cost since if they're balanced it would mean an all-MAX force would be easy to counter.

Ive made long posts about this many times before, but in short If I were to remake the MAX class I'd:

- Make them even tankier
- Make them slower (ie. tweak the run speed to at least be a little slower than soft infantry)
- Have them be able to only use one arm-gun at a time (rebalance AV guns to remain effective vs MAXes and tanks accordingly)
- Have them all have aegis-shield or similar abilities that let's them push into rooms or soak damage for allies. (ZOE is a little pointless now, and lockdown doesn't fit the role of a "pusher" and is crap to boot outside of pure AA-work)
- Remove charge as an ability

Basically remaking it into "the tank" that can push into a room forcefully, but needs allies to provide the majority of the killing-power since it can't just mass-kill with duel AI guns anymore. More of a versatile support unit than just a unit that can do all aspects of killing better than everyone else.

At that point you could drastically drop the cost of them too since they wouldn't just be a straight up super-unit and could be outplayed by other types of infantry if it didn't have the support of allies that could capitalize on the openings the MAX created in the battle.

-Stigma

The only MAX that has a TTK advantage over regular infantry guns is NC's.

You can see here that infantry guns have a significantly shorter TTK:

http://ps2model-axiom.rhcloud.com/#sttk/sh100-1-1/ha/1.25/N/7525/7518/7512/7519/22/7214

^ TTKs on nano5 / NMG heavy

http://ps2model-axiom.rhcloud.com/#sttk/sh100-1-1/la/1/7525/7518/7512/7519/22/7214

^ TTKs on standard non-nano infantry

MAX weapons have their own advantages too admittedly - no ADS time since you know...you can't ADS, and headshot burst is higher since you have 2x weapons not just one.

I think that just making them impossible to revive would work pretty well. If the medic beams his max back alive, *poof!* out pops a little engineer (or whatever was inside at the time)!

That way, given the new resource cost, they would still be the beastly things that they are (and I think they should be) but killing one would actually be a real victory.